L'ultimo guerriero

At the bottom end of the apocalypse movie scale is this piece of pish called 'The Final Executioner'.. at least where I come from. A bloke is trained by an ex-cop to seek vengeance on those that killed his woman and friends in cold blood.. and that's about it. Lots of fake explosions and repetitive shootings ensue. Has one of the weirdest array of costumes I've seen in a film for a while, and a massive fortress which is apparently only run by 7 people. GREAT job on the dubbing too guys(!) Best moment: when our hero loses a swordfight and is about to be skewered through the neck, he just gets out his gun and BANG! Why not do that earlier? It's a mystery. As is why anyone would want to sit through this in the first place. I'm still puzzling over that one myself now.. 2/10

My review was written in December 1985 after watching the movie on MGM/UA video cassette.

"The Final Executioner", also known as "The Last Warrior", is a subpar 1983 Italian science fiction film set after a nuclear holocaust (represented by lowercase stock footage of volcanic eruptions and bombed out neighborhoods). Cannon pickup wisely bypassed U. S. theaters in favor of home video release.

Story vaguely borrows from classics such as "The Most Dangerous Game" and "The Tenth Victim", postulating humanity divided into two groups, the rich, privileged few and the radiation contaminated masses. The rich olk hunt down teh contaminated population for sport.

Cybernetics expert Alan (top billed William Mang) discovers that after 80,000,000 people have been killed in hunts there are no more contaminated folks to shoot down. To keep their privileges, however, the rich class continues to designate people as "target material" and kill off healthy folks, perpetuating the system.

Alan teams up with a tough, excop Sam (Woody Strode) to launch an assault on a hunters' headquarters. It takes many reels of filler, punctuated by extraneous sex scenes, until the good guys make some headway.

With no special effects, little atmosphere and a one-joke script, pic is science fiction in name only. Poor dubbing negates the cast's efforts, though Strode is an impressive screen presence convincingly beating up multiple young guys in hand-to-hand combat.

Earth has been destroyed in a nuclear holocaust. Well, parts of the Earth, because somewhere in Italy, a band of purebred survivors--those without radioactive contamination--are holed up in a massive mansion surrounded by lush grounds, waiting for the next opportunity to go hunting for those with polluted blood. The Final Executioner is the story of one of their would be victims, Alan (William Mang, who looks, not surprisingly, a lot like Kurt Russell), and his efforts to take down the legally sanctioned hunters, who are led by Edra (Marina Costa) and Erasmus (Harrison Muller Jr. ). Alan has been trained to kill by former NYPD cop Sam (Woody Strode) who mostly hangs around giving his pupil moral support and mooching for tinned meat. Strode is by far the best thing about the film, though he doesn't look at all well and only appears for about a third of the running time. As for the story, it's a blending of elements from better films and stories, including Ten Little Indians, The Most Dangerous Game, and Escape From New York. The Final Executioner moves along at a fair pace and provides reasonable entertainment for less discriminate action fans.

I cannot explain how terrible this movie is. I would normally not waste my time writing a review of something this bad, but people need know one thing: DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE. This is not one of those "so terrible it's funny to watch and make fun of" movies, no siree. Instead this movie is awful in every sense of the word, for not only is the acting, plot and directing awful, but there is one particular scene which nearly made me vomit each time they showed it (3 times). In the scene a girl is raped and killed while people watch on, obviously turned on by this, and we're not just talking males, it is the female leader who commands the man to rape and kill the girl. I've seen and read American Psycho, and that is not disturbing - this is.

I really don't know what else to say. This movie should have a much lower rating. Luckily for you, you'll probably never be able to find this god-awful movie, and please don't try. It has no redeeming qualities what-so-ever. None. So please don't try.

Following a nuclear holocaust the upper class hunt the expendable contaminated.

Director Romolo Guerrieri offers a choppy late in the game Mad Max 2 and Escape from New York (1981) cash in, akin to Escape from the Bronx (1983), The Exterminators of the Year 3000 (1983) to name a few. Compared to the other B-movie Italian film around at the same time this one is pacer than most.

The Final Executioner has all the clunkiness you'd expect from these low budget and Italian productions. Guerrieri delivers a little motorcycle and car action, shootouts, fights, an electronic field with codes, even a training montage. To writer Roberto Leoni's credit it tries to to be a little different borrowing The Most Dangerous (1932) concept of human hunting humans. It also has a hint of The Prize of Peril (1983), predating the Running Man (1987). Cheesy, intruding and odd drum beats aside, Carlo de Nonno's synthesiser score is at times on the money.

Stubbly lead William Mang does his best Kurt Russell and Clint Eastwood impression as Tanner as he picks off the bad guys one by one. The male supporting cast wrestle with the script more than the fight scenes. With a number of actresses, including stunning Maria Romano (Thor the Conqueror's Ina) as Magda doing their best with the thin dialogue, Margit Evelyn Newton (Zombie Creeping Flesh (1980)) appears as Diane and gets naked as the screenplay dictates. Bearded sword wielding Harrison Muller as hunter Erasmus is notable along with memorable Marina Costa as mean sharpshooter Edra. With limited screen time Woody Strode steals every scene as Sam, a hard-nosed mentor type character.

Overall, far from the bottom of the barrel addition to the genre, worth checking out thanks to the concept, cast and score.